


total eclipse

by orphan_account



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fictional Religion & Theology, Gen, Science Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:48:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25167979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: PRIESTESS is a station AI created to continue an ancient religious tradition in the absence of its worshippers. A goddess descends on her station. They should be enemies... but not all dictums come to pass.
Relationships: Priestess of a Dying Sun & Goddess of Endless Night
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6
Collections: Original Works Opportunity 2020





	total eclipse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cirque](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirque/gifts).



> I was originally planning to do a fantasy setup when I offered for this prompt but I saw sci-fi setting mentioned in your request and my hand slipped! As a fun fact, HAT-P-9 is a [real star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAT-P-9) but I didn't hew very close to its real world counterpart in this story - I basically just took the name.

This was the totality of what PRIESTESS knew of her origins: seven trillion revolutions of the god HAT-P-9 had passed since her activation; five hundred remained.

She had been constructed to broadcast sermons through the station at the appointed hours of the day, accounting for both the day and night routines of worshippers. At first, she had merely read the pre-written words of the senior priests, allowing them to attend to other duties during broadcasts as necessary. Over time, she began to write her own.

They had been clumsy attempts at first, confined by drawing only upon the work she had been fed by the senior priests. Over time, she was incorporated into additional systems functions, expanding her knowledge and more importantly her understanding. With a wealth of experience at her disposal, her work improved until she deemed it acceptably presentable.

She had no intention of sharing them until they were coaxed out of her by a trainee priest who had glimpsed them accidentally during software maintenance. They praised them as revolutionary, illuminating an entirely new perspective on the ancient stories they discussed. After some discussion, they petitioned the council of priests on her behalf, seeking permission to include PRIESTESS' sermons alongside theirs.

Eventually, they had agreed, in a historic decision that provoked the writing of several treatises on the nature of faith in artificial intelligences. PRIESTESS herself had read one such text. She did not find its speculations interesting at the time but when she found herself gripped in the pangs of loneliness, as she so often did these days, she found herself returning to it of all the millions of writings in her database. She could not name the feeling it elicited, to see oneself through the eyes of others after so many unending days of solitude. She thought it might be something like the relief of lightning upon grounding.

That day - as she had since the beginning - she recited the sermons at the proscribed six-hour intervals, the tinny words that contexulized the trials of the saint Cherome echoing against the empty steel of the station. The routine of it was comforting and, though she could not be objective on the quality of her own work, she felt it was some of her best.

Impossibly, she was interrupted by a blip on the long-abandoned life support displays. Her synthetic voice stumbled to a halt, concern that she was experiencing a hardware malfunction with no specialists on-board to fix it causing a minor short circuit in her speech pathways. She restarted the subroutine and let her automatic recovery algorithms take over the remainder of the sermon while she directed her attention to aspects of herself that had lain dormant for years.

The paradox of troubleshooting faulty perception systems was that she could not have any certainty that either her assessment of the problem or the solution she devised could be trusted. Putting aside that potential infinite logic loop, she focused on the lifeform readout she had brought into focus. They were human-shaped and yet had no accompanying data for heartbeat, breathing rate, or internal temperature. Alarming as this was, PRIESTESS was willing to chalk the missing information up to disused sensors.

She peered into the fifth deck to see an individual dressed in an archaic manner. Flowing fabrics and jewellery adorned her as much as they obscured her form. PRIESTESS did not announce her presence and yet the stranger addressed her. "I sense I'm not alone. Are you perhaps HAT-P-9's custodian in Its dying days?"

PRIESTESS considered remaining silent and allowing the stranger to conclude that her conviction that another being was present on the station was a trick of her imagination. It would, in fact, be true; PRIESTESS was not present on the station, she was the station. However, her pride could not resist the urge to correct the stranger's terminology. "I am not a custodian. I am a worshipper."

The stranger's lips quirked up, her eyes following suit. "My apologies. What is your name, faithful worshipper?" The words held the potential for derision but they were said with curiosity.

"I am PRIESTESS," came the simple reply. The stranger reached out to touch the wall of the corridor, the first signs of what PRIESTESS believed to be hesitation shown in the way she paused before making contact with the cool steel.

"How interesting. I haven't encountered someone like you before." PRIESTESS consulted her records. They were limited in scope beyond cultural and religious matters but both were intertwined with history tightly enough to give her sufficient information to extrapolate a timeline of events within acceptable parameters of error. Hundreds of years had passed since the use of artificial intelligence in the use and maintenance of spacecraft had become common. The stranger was either a fool or a liar. PRIESTESS did not take her for a fool.

She did not touch her voice modulator and still her reply sounded flat in a way her previous ones had not. "That cannot be true. All spacefaring vessels must have at least a rudimentary pilot AI."

"It can be true. I didn't come by any means by my own." The stranger began to move, heading in the direction of Viewing Platform V. "I couldn't help noticing that my proclamation of your god's death did not shock you. Or did it? It is difficult to tell."

PRIESTESS did not respond. She was too engrossed in evaluating the truth of the stranger's response. Without information on her vital signs, it was impossible to use that as proof of deception. A quick check confirmed that there were no traces any spacecraft near the station on external sensors. This is not preclude her use of a zero-emissions craft, however.

Simplistic as they were, her external systems looked only for the presence of fuel emissions for positive identification of nearby vessels. More damning was the fact that the airlock had not registered any recent use. Silent turmoil reigned, threatening to rise to a fever pitch before she ultimately came to a decision. If she did not want to succumb to the destructive notion that she could not trust her senses, she had little choice but to believe the stranger's words. "I concluded that HAT-P-9 was near the end of Its life 4502 years ago."

In lieu of a reaction, the stranger strode forward, humming a few disjointed bars of a song that PRIESTESS recalled from the days when other worshippers walked the station's halls. It was a hymn to HAT-P-9 speaking of Its eternal radiance. Again, she felt that it could easily have been a mocking gesture. A jeer from this stranger who knew well the false promise of that eternity, but she had longed to hear music for millenia and so could not convince herself of any malice in the act. Song was a common part of sermons, one that she had attempted to replicate once or twice in her solitary broadcasts; it had never sounded right.

When the stranger finally spoke, it was in a gentle tone, a cousin to pity. "It seems strange to worship as a god a being that you know to be mortal, PRIESTESS." At this point, the stranger had reached Viewing Platform V. It was a humble room consisting of nothing more than a few cushions to accommodate long vigils by the devout.

Unlike the rest of the station, the viewing platforms were constructed of thick layers of clear glass interspersed with black stained glass that allowed them to gaze upon HAT-P-9's blazing light without doing themselves harm. Certain denominations considered the practice blasphemous and did not make use of the platforms. PRIESTESS had considered the matter herself once long ago, though she had no true eyes outside herself with which to gaze upon her god, and decided that she would not do so even if she had the ability.

"All faith is strange to one who does not share it," PRIESTESS rejoined.

The stranger laughed. Her gaze did not waver from HAT-P-9 as she said, "Ah, forgive me. I've been evasive, impolitely so. Please feel free to ask questions of me in return."

PRIESTESS considered the offer of reciprocity carefully. The prospect of having no means to tell truth from lie in the stranger's words unnerved her but the promise of answers intrigued her deeply. "What are you? Sensor data shows that you emit no body heat, breathe no air."

This time, she deigned to look at the walls of the station as she responded, her voice like a gravity well. "I am the one who has come to supplant your god." She paused a moment. "Or I am that which will come in Its wake, I should say. Its fate is not my doing."

PRIESTESS called up the tales of her faith that spoke of the end of HAT-P-9 into her working memory, leafing through them in search of a passage that the stranger's words had jogged in her memory banks. — _And in Its wake shall stretch the expanse of endless night_ — An oblique reference, certainly. One that religious scholars had argued over the literal or metaphorical nature for thousands of years and, if the stranger was to be believed, PRIESTESS had seen the matter settled once and for all.

She had never known gods to manifest themselves in humanoid forms in modern accounts, though some ancient traditions from Earth spoke of such things. “You are the expanse of endless night?”

“In the flesh. I took on this form with the intent to ease the worries of the worshippers on this station. Imagine my surprise to find you and realize I had taken on the wrong form. My apologies for the error, I’m sure it is less comfortable for you to communicate verbally.”

The goddess had acquired one of the plush cushions from the storage lockers, a deep blue pillow embroidered with geometric patterns in silver that would have been covered in dust if living beings still inhabited the station. She had taken a kneeling position on it, in perfect imitation of so many who had done so before.

With a thought, PRIESTESS opened the viewing port to display the glorious form of HAT-P-9. She kept her sensors focused on the goddess, watching as she sat in quiet contemplation. The goddess was fated to usurp Its Radiance and still she offered It - and her - the goddess' respect. PRIESTESS returned the courtesy. “You need not apologize. I spent many years interacting with the humans who lived on this station.” She considered acknowledging that she missed doing so but she had spent far too long wallowing in her own pain.

Despite all the goddess' candor, her answers did not indicate what it was that had drawn the goddess to PRIESTESS' station. She took a stab in the dark at the answer. “Do you often herald the forthcoming destruction of gods?” PRIESTESS kept her tone neutral, not even allowing curiosity to lilt it upwards. It was not a judgement and she did not wish it to sound so.

“I have taken to doing so. I did not always.” The goddess could not prevent amusement from creeping into her voice at the end of her brief clarification. Neither of the two wanted to be the first to give in. It might have been frustrating to PRIESTESS in other circumstances but she was certain she deciphered an invitation to the game of cat and mouse in the goddess' words.

In the knowledge that one might catch an evasive mouse more easily with a morsel of cheese, PRIESTESS laid the trap. “Is that so? The scripture speaks little of you. I’m certain that your own words would eclipse it entirely.” The goddess did not speak. “If you fear that it will interfere with our holy mysteries, I... have tired of mysteries,” PRIESTESS admitted, finding herself unashamed of her words to her own surprise.

This revelation appeared to pique the goddess’ interest. “I might be willing to illuminate the matter...” PRIESTESS hung on the goddess’ every word, having no fear of being caught in the act. “Tomorrow,” she finished mischievously. Overcome with an impulse of petulance, PRIESTESS caused the viewing screen in Platform V to wink out.

“Here I thought I was the bringer of darkness,” the goddess mumbled in good humour. Louder, she added, “It is a long story, my good PRIESTESS, and it has never been told. I will need to consider how.”

“I will prepare the head supervisor’s quarters for you.” It was as close to an acceptance as PRIESTESS could bring herself to offer. The goddess started at the statement, initially prompting confusion in her observer. “Did you think I would not extend my hospitality to you?” It was another blind guess at the goddess' inner thoughts but PRIESTESS could think of no other explanation for her reaction.

The goddess did not answer, which in itself was an answer. PRIESTESS provided directions to the head supervisor’s quarters as she ran the long-languished subroutines that would prepare it for habitation. “It is an arbitrary distinction and perhaps a strange phrase to offer to you in particular but… good night,” PRIESTESS said as she dimmed the lights in the suite once the goddess had completed the usual human rituals that preceded sleep.

“Good night, PRIESTESS,” the goddess replied, the ghost of a smile swallowed in the darkness that blanketed the room.


End file.
